What adds salt to the wound is that the money was taken from the IRS who would’ve used it to hire more auditors so they can audit more wealthy people who’ve been cheating on their taxes.For every $1 spent for auditors, they return an average of $12.
So we really lost $168bn in federal income that could’ve helped the public.
They don’t want people knowing where their money goes.
The Pentagon can’t/won’t account for trillions of dollars that they’ve been given, which adds more salt to the wound.
I’m pretty sure that bill only passed the house then the companion bill stalled out in Senate committee. Neither Senate Dems or Biden fell for that bait.
Well that’s great news. Thank you
Source? I thought only the house bill, which was DOA in the senate, included that. Don’t mean to sound confrontational, I’d just like to know and haven’t been able to find anything myself.
You’ve got more information than me, I wasn’t aware it died in the Senate. I just assumed the figure in the post was referring to that same House Bill.
Brought to by the “if you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” crowd.
I’ve posted this a few times but it fits here:
This country spent $8 Trillion on two wars over 20 years! That’s $400 billion each year.
This country could have paid for all the chemotherapy 80 times over
OR we could have paid for rebuilding/fixing this countries infrastructure for a 1/3 of that cost.
OR America could have built out a National high speed rail
Or many many other things.
instead we killed thousands of people and got what in return???
Hey now, for a beautiful moment we created value for the rayethon shareholder. And thays all thay matters
With a national healthcare payor negotiating the cost of care you could possibly pay for all of it with that money.
My only issue is that your estimate of the number of people killed is missing 3 zeroes. It’s more like millions.
still quite a bit away from “millions” the HIGHEST (by a significant margin) for Iraq is 1.033 million, and that is total excess death, not casualties and for Afghanistan it barely reaches 200,000 in 20 years
so no, Hundreds of thousands is correct, Millions is Soviet territory
More than a million is “millions”. And if we’re talking about total historical deaths attributable then the US has the USSR beat by a lot. Neoliberal capitalism is just as bloodthirsty as state capitalism, except the US had more time and power to kill people.
I don’t think you anyone can beat Russia’s and all of it’s forms death toll in 20th+21th century.
They said Soviet so you’re moving the goalposts, and I think if you really believe that Russia is worse then you need to educate yourself on US foreign interventions.
Russia is bad, but they haven’t had nearly the global influence the US has had over the last century. The US is singularly militarily dominant. Any claims about other countries being bigger or badder is just fearmongering propaganda.
If we expand the scope to proxy wars then the US would have to be responsible for more deaths than any other single entity in human history by a large margin, many of which come from outright genocides. They are a global superpower. They are an amoral powerbroking machine.
They said Soviet territory . It is vague form of point to “Russia & company” among else witch BTW even during Soviet era had causee millions of people to die. Difference is though your comrades kept it secret while US made a lots of their shit public over the years. You have no idea what they did in under the wing of east block if you talk like that.
First of all, don’t call them my comrades. The people I’d consider comrades in that area, the anarchists, were betrayed and slaughtered by the USSR. A tankie wouldn’t call the USSR “state capitalist” as I did.
Secondly, if you’re referring to the victims as counted by the black book of communism, you know they counted hypothetical babies that might have otherwise been born in their victim tally? And they also counted Nazi combatants? It’s an absolutely shameful work of revisionism, and the only reason it exists is to put smoke up as cover for the crimes of western capitalist imperialism.
And thirdly, are you saying that by “Soviet territory” they were referring to all former eastern bloc countries in both their past and present forms? What an absolutely wild thing to say. That is bizarre. I have never heard that construction before and it’s clearly you reaching for something you can say to not be just simply wrong.
They were saying “in the realm of death count of the Soviets”, which is also bizarre but at least it’s a reasonable grammatical construction.
In return our billionaires got even more billions, and their servants in Congress got reelected.
My only problem with this image is the money is being fed to a soldier, not a general or military political advisor, the people who end up with the real money.
He’s wearing a gold cuirass
I think the “soldier” in the image represents exactly that, the MIC/War Machine, not just a soldier. I’ve seen this cartoon many times and always assumed the intent was the military soaking up tons of money.
I will leave this quote from Eisenhower’s “A Chance For Peace” speech.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Ive never heard of this speech but very good read, thanks for sharing
This was USSR, so it is possible.
It’s not mystery money, it’s Modern Monetary Theory. Republicans are invested in hiding that fact that we can afford to do all the good stuff and fund the military at the same time
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I heard a very good theory on how to combat inflation.
The government collects an increased tax amount from the wealthy and holds on to that money, effectively taking it out of circulation, and over the course of the next 10 or 20 years you trickle it out into public services.
Boom, suddenly you took money out of circulation and helped people at the same time.
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That’s how trickle down economics should actually work.
My fiscally conservative friend made a point to bring up Biden spending his children’s legacy on Ukraine aid every time conversations would turn political. Then the Isreal bombing happened, and he won’t touch it. His wife is Jewish.
Lmao rules for thee but not for mee
The whole “Israel=Judaism” thing is poison.
When the federal government spends it is creating money with the press of a keystroke. It is essentially putting money into circulation. And that money is going to American businesses that make weapons and technology which is then sent to Ukraine. Those American businesses employ American workers.
Government spending creates money, it doesn’t create debt. Too much government spending could create inflation though.
Any amount of money printing in this context adds to inflation. Every dollar printed devalues the rest
Though AFAIK controlled inflation is healthy for economy. At least in comparison to deflation.
My man, money is debt.
Which is why the cost of living has increased massivelly in the US all the while that very same FED that’s creating new money by the truckload keeps pushing out Official Inflation figures that are way off from the observed reality of cost of living increases.
“Printing” money (it’s not really printed nowadays, but let’s go with calling it “printing”) decreases the value of the money already in exitence (it increases the count of units of claim to the underlying value whilst not at all increasing the underlying value) hence more money units are needed to get the same things - a.k.a. Inflation - but since there very same people who print the money are the ones telling the rest officially how much Inflation is, they can easilly print money whilst they deceive the public about the negative side effects of it.
It’s important to be clear about “they” here. Most of the Democrats in Congress and President Biden tried to pass money for education and health care, but they were blocked by all the Republicans and a couple Democrats. If John Fetterman had been elected in 2020 instead of 2022, there’s a decent chance we could’ve gotten it. Not a sure thing, but decent.
On the other hand, almost everyone in Congress supports military spending because it almost always benefits their constituents directly because military contractors have shrewdly built production facilities in nearly every state.
If we can give Biden another term (moderately difficult against Trump, hard against anyone else), expand the Democratic lead in the Senate (difficult), and flip the house (probably easy), we can probably get some education and health care spending. Maybe even a minimum wage increase and a permanent expansion of the child tax credit. Maybe a small UBI. Lots of things!!
(And yes the lavish spending on the military will certainly continue.)
Even with a majority in both chambers Biden and Democrats will not pass any of that.
If you look at elections you will see the Democrats like having only a slim margin in control and they always have someone who will fall on the sword and vote against things if it looks like something progressive will pass.
Hell they put money into Republicans to beat progressive Democratic candidates.
Only way you going get any of that is when we get rid of the two party system. Like with rank style voting.
100%
Real change requires real change
This is why I vote single issue for voting reform. If a Democrat supports IRV, I’ll vote Democrat. If not, I vote third party.
“But Explodicle, you’re effectively just voting for Republicans! This is the most important election ever, past and future.”
No. I’m not voting Republican either. People who do vote Republican have not voted twice. We’ve been voting lesser evil for decades and it does not work. “Buying time” for nothing to change does not work. Giving Democrats the house, senate, and presidency does not work. They refuse to even try to expand the Supreme Court. We’re being played.
The Democrats need to go and we need an actual leftist major party. Each candidate can either get on board with that, or wait for revolution to become our only choice.
I agree lets start a third progressive party and start taking over towns and city elections. Hell we can probably get Congress if we try hard enough.
Democrats have no support in red states like here In Oklahoma. They can’t win but a good third party could.
They only had a majority on paper thanks to Manchin and Sinema. But sure, let’s blame them for falling to squeeze blood from a stone.
“Only democrats have agency” is an interesting trope.
You’re gonna have to explain that one to me.
Unless you’re trying to say Republicans aren’t evil robots who automatically oppose everything Democrats do, but that makes no sense.
I think it’s sometimes called Murc’s law.
Part of it is blaming Democrats for things, but when Republicans are huge assholes accepting it as like just a force of nature.
So like, democrats fail to pass a law to such and such. That framing ignores that Republicans took action to foil it.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/03/andrew-gelman-on-murcs-law talks about it a little. Or https://whereofonecanspeak.com/2023/03/02/youve-probably-never-heard-of-murcs-law-but-youve-seen-it-in-action-lots-of-times/
Ah, I see. I thought you were disagreeing with me.
when the issue is assuming the radicalization of the Democratic Party’s platform? ya, or would you argue that republicans should be working to help democrats pass their legislation
Israel needs that help! There are still some living children in the land they’re about to steal.
Just for a little context, keep in mind that “military aid” be it to Ukraine or Israel is almost entirely spent in the US. We ship missiles and bombs from stockpiles, and pay Raytheon to make some more.
So this money is being spent to the benefit of Americans, just the military industrial folks and their shareholders.
It’s still resources that could be spent towards something else, something ultimately more productive.
Building a house takes a lot of work, so why spend that effort into building a bomb that destroys many such houses, instead? What does this achieve for humanity?
Because building houses lowers the value of all the real estate the wealthy already own.
The good old “military industrial complex” 😑
Worth mentioning that there are well paying, stable jobs in the MIC for the other 99%. I work for a sub (in IT, and spend most of my time on the commercial side of the business) in such a company. While I resent our biggest revenue maker, it does enable the company to fund scientific research and commercial space endeavors.
I wouldn’t call myself a bootlicker, per se, but I do enjoy my job, despite what I’ve started viewing as a necessary evil — the pay and benefits are highly competitive, I’m 98% WFH, layoffs and turnover are rare (there are regularly people retiring who had entered straight from college and worked directly on Apollo missions), the job is challenging and I’m given a long leash.
“I mean, I know my work contributes to some of the worst atrocities of mankind but they give me a lot of money and benefits for forgetting that I actively contribute in facilitating the slaughter of children which makes it easier to swallow. Also I get to work from home a lot! ❤️”
Eh, that may be how you see it.
Personally I’ve been more directly involved in actually helping people and things go to the fricken moon than I have in all of my defense projects, combined. And space is just one of our cool science markets.
I can do defense stuff, I’m authorized to, in a pinch I can (and have), but I would really rather not. Work on that side of the house sucks.
Nobody likes how the sausage is made, but it’s going to get made as long as someone buying it. I’m not eating the sausage. I’m not buying the sausage. I’m having a satisfying job, managing operations at a small pig farm that also develops new cutting-edge cancer medications inside of pig pancreases. Different group of pigs, though.
It’s not so much “how I see it” as it is “how it is” and you don’t seem to deny that.
I understood that you prefer not to work on the child-killing devices the first time. Nonetheless all the other “cool science markets” still help your employer make those child-killing devices.
While the sausage will keep being made, I can actively choose not to be the butcher and I’m having a hard time respecting people gushing about their work on the non-butchering side of the same company.
No, you have it backwards, the child killing devices enable my employer to do the cool science markets.
Revenue from child killing devices and related patents pays for the science research. And as it turns out, a lot of those patents also work really well for the cool life-saving science stuff.
Oh, now I get it, your employer has to facilitate killing children, so they can do cool science stuff! Wow, that’s instantly so much better! The kids will be so happy when they hear that!
Damn, if only somehow could figure out how to do cool science stuff without all the dead children, though. Maybe you could do some cool science stuff on that maybe? Like soonish?
I put an ETA on as you were responding, so I’ll move it here for your convenience.
ETA, this is why I see it as more a necessary evil. War pays the bills. My company is probably pretty unique in that we are not a prime and we put most of our revenue towards private research. We are not unique in how our war revenue gets used to subsidize more humanitarian tech, and I imagine even Boeing or LM wouldn’t be able to keep their lights on with just their commercial businesses, either, or the cost of commercial aviation would be unattainable to most people. And without them I imagine FedEx and UPS would crumble, as would USPS. And then the entire economy after that. Just as one example.
World peace is a terrific goal. But getting there will have a lot of unintended consequences, just due do how ingrained the war machine is with the commercial sector and contemporary lifestyle. At least in America.
ETA, again, and that wouldn’t even account to the number of displaced workers inside the war machine, be it on commercial or defense sides. It’s one thing to selfishly think of this for myself, it’s another thing to think of the economic and societal impact of millions of simultaneously displaced, highly skilled workers.
Another edit: I wouldn’t be surprised if, incidentally, the economic and social impact of shutting down the war machine and declaring world peace would actually kill more children, just it’d be white kids instead, and indirectly through poverty, hunger, and slowed research of life saving technology (due to its funding drying up) instead of drone strikes. The system itself is intrinsically stacked against world peace, at multiple levels. The effects of several thousand families, and in some cases entire communities, being deprived of their primary source of income, simultaneously, would be absolutely devastating.
This is not worth mentioning. Everyone knows that you can sell out your values for money and comfort. Most people just aren’t willing to do it for such relatively low benefits.
Did they at least give you a nice dog collar for that leash?
Why not call yourself a bootlicker? I’m sure many would.
How dare you criticize the US giving weapons to our allies. You must want to kill the Jews, you dirty Hamas lover.
/s
Old men keep dreaming of battles for young men to fight.
-The Chariot, Daggers
Yeah. It drives me nuts when the media talks about misinformation as if they didn’t help lie us into a war that’s lasted most of my life. Clearly none of the bad things that we all see happening daily are the reason we’re all sad and angry right?
You can’t expect billionaires to pay taxes or risk anything of their own, right? That would be silly.
Why should the richest people to ever live on this planet have to pay taxes so that the rest of us can have medicare for all and a UBI equivalent to a living wage? Or to pay their workers an equal share of the profits from the companies they own?
But China is eating your pankake
The education system has a much higher overall ROI, but it’s unfortunately spread across all of society and takes a generation to actually pay out.
By contrast, putting money into the Military Industrial Congressional Complex pays off consistently, predictably, and in a manner that channels the returns straight back into the investors’ accounts.
It’s just simple economics.
Yeah but educated Americans don’t like israel so AIPAC wins double by lobby to defund education and giving themselves bombs.
The thing that keeps that happening is people themselves. Best we can do is removed and moan on social media. Of course they will continue doing nothing for us.
While true, when the representatives that you keep voting for keep advancing corporate interests instead of helping their constituents, it starts to feel like the democratic process has failed us.
What would fix a lot of this would be a mechanism where the people could vote to remove someone from a federal position, because the people have no recourse but to wait a few years and hope enough people still remember the bad things the incumbent did.
Term limits would help too.
What would fix a lot of this would be a mechanism where the people could vote to remove someone from a federal position
A vote of no confidence and we get to reelect Congress?
Term limits would help too.
Term limits only help when you make politics about the issues rather than who has the most money to get noticed. Make the term limits too short and all you do is give it to the people with the most money considering our politicians currently spend half their time fund raising for their next election.
democratic process has failed us
This isn’t the fault of the democratic process, but allowing money to be speech, companies to be people, and the oligarchy to take over.
